Alignment Tools

Hello, I have been building for a while now and find the In-World editor lacking such tools for automatic alignment of Prims.

I wonder whether any builders out there can recommend me any 3rd party tools that can speed up my building productivity.

Thanks

Automatic alignment? Copy X or Y or Z into the new prims and they will be aligned.. also if you're making duplicates, just shift+drag on a position arrow, it will copy perfectly aligned, and you can ctrl+z to move it to the exact place that the original was in

Thanks for the reply, that still is not speedy.....I saw this video on a helper called PrimDocker but wanted to ask a few builders using 3rd party helpers. I really need input of all the Building helpers out there and which worked best for them.

For me...I have tried most all of the building tools that are available and I still prefer using what the Linden gods give me. I was always looking for someting that would make building easier. Its not the actual building that is dificult, its the creativity. Its easy to slap prims together but difficult to shape them into something. No tool will make you creative. And no, the Linden tools dont align and no, they dont blink with different colors and no, they dont have fancy grid markings on them but you know what? The Linden tools simply work. I have to do my own math calculations but thats pretty easy. The Linden tools dont add extra prims like some other one click programs. I have full control of who is the creator and copy/mod/trans permissions of objects in the linden tools without a big hassle. So if your thinking that some of the other builder tools will do better...save your money and learn to use the Linden tools first. Then when your proficient with them and have sold a few of your creations then you can check out some of the other tools. Im almost sure you will discard them and go back to the standard issue tools.

Another tip... start your build on a nice round number..

If you can position a prim at, say 50,50 instead of 49.24,51.048, it
makes it much easier to quickly line things up with the original
prim -- so if the first prim is 5x5.. you know something else
is going to match exactly at 45,50 and so on. Then you can
link items and nudge them into where they are supposed to be
in the building site

In other words, doing a whole build where everything is in oddball
numbers like 48.4587 will drive you batty!

And use the grid...

Exactly, same for rotations you can use the "-" sign to make opposite rotations, for example you have 1 prim at Y Rotation: 128 If You want to make an opposite rotation for another prim then write "-128".

About stretching: If you want change size but no position do it from the XYZ boxes and not manually.

I'm agreed with the above comments, the best tool is your brain.

IMO Prim.Docker is very good and "possibly" the cheapest and easiest to use. They are all much the same with Virtual Builder requiring a lot more input in terms of learning its capabilities. (Virtual Builder is probably the most sophisticated but I can only comment from viewing the demos). Search SL Exchange and read the reviews, all 3 I think have Demo Videos to view.

If you purchase any, I would recommend editing your Edit menu to display more digits after the decimal and changing the increments, I currently use 6 digits after the decimal, SL allows maximum 7 digits. You will also need to change the size of the x,y,z co-ord boxes to display them. This can also be changed for the taper,hollow and cut as well.

It is very interesting to see how much adrift your prims actually are when you have this option available, what you would think is perfect aligned by just inputing the numbers, can in actual fact be off enough in the hundreds and thousands and they are actually not level.

This option requires some editing of the files with the SL Folder on your computer, I am sorry but I cannot advise you on how to do this. You will have to search this option under XUI files or wait for someone who wants to offer that advise.

Just to add, I recently purchased Prim.Docker and you have full mod/copy/perms on everything you create, you build the same as normal and just add a script to each prim, there is a hud you wear that can sit anywhere on your screen and can be resized, just click any prim, then the one you want to align, then click the x,y or z co-ord on your hud and they automatically align.This does take some playing around with especially if the prim has been rotated, cut, tapered or sheared. For speed of building yes it is very quick.

IMHO before purchasing any building Accessory, you will need to know/have thorough knowledge of the SL Edit menu and functions first to make good use of them and to put them to their full use.

And a good understanding of basic mathematics and some more complexed arithmetics if you want to be clever with shaping prims.

I have been using positioning scripts to set positions past the 3rd decimal place. Can you give us a hint as to which files or where this information can be found? I would much rather have the accuracy available in the build menu rather than using scripts.

Thanks!

On increasing precision in the edit menu:

I did a little spelunking on my Mac, and discovered the XML file that controls the layout of the object edit menu. It is "floater_tools.xml".

Specifically: /Applications/Second Life.app/Contents/Resources/skins/xui/en-us/floater_tools.xml

Note Bene:
If you are not comfortable editing an XML file, after first making a backup copy, you should not try the following... take responsibilty for your own edits, ok? I am not responsible if you put your client into some unusable state. OK.. end of disclaimer...

I searched for "decimal_digits" (same line as spinner)

You will notice a few of these for position and size. I changed the position ones to 5 digit accuracy:

decimal_digits="5"

While I was at it, I decided to tweak Transparency to 98% (from 90)...

search for "Transparency %" .. note that in the next statement down, there
is a spinner. I changed: max_val="98"

restart the client, and test the edit dialog. You should see changes.

----

Obviously you can go wild with this, and there's probably some more interactive means of doing this. This is just what I discovered from 5 mins of exploring.

Bucky

Bucky,

If you are not going to give a step by step guide within your description of what to change, then I think regardless of your disclaimer it is irresponsible of you to give this information.

If someone needs/wants to change that information in the XML file they will need to know some other things to change in order for them to use your example of changing the decimal digits. They can change the decimal digits, but will not be able to see them all in the edit menu as they don't know what else to change.

To add, also in that file, if someone makes a mistake or edit something they are not aware of it can or will cause SL to crash and could result in a full uninstall and restall.

I suggest that Larrie is probably right...

It's extremely irresponsible for me to suggest that someone edit a plain
text file on their own system after first backing up. Let's nip all of this notion
of exploring and creativity in the bud right now!

I amend my post to:

"wander around in the second life resource files.. look for something to do with menus, and consider changing some of the '3's to '5's"

In reality, I expect that I am posting to ADULTS, and they can make their own choices as to what to edit or not on their own machines. My disclaimer did mention the idea of being comfortable editing an XML file. Not as if anyone is paying me for the info...

They can also check out : http://jacek-antonelli.blogspot.com/2006/12/rolling-your-own-menu.html

I'm going to second everything Larrie said. Prim Docker is my best friend. Plan to spend some time getting use to it by playing around but once you get the hand of it I'm sure you'll agree.

my vote goes to primdocker

i used to do it the hard way and do the math. i had primdocker in my inv for a month before i even touched it and now i don't know why i waited so long. makes building a whole lot easier imo.

make your first piece then hit snap to x,y then zoom to selected then start yur build from there this is almost the most important thing esasally working with micro prims now some of the tools that will place preloaded shapes are kinda nice for making micro prims that way you can set up your box to be .1 or .05 and it does not fill the screan when your working

Have to say I've tried a few tools and for me prim dockers the fastest and most accurate I've tried. Some of the other well known tools do leave small gaps.

I usually use the linden tools but if you need something in a hurry there is no doubting dockers quicker, once you get used to it. Plus at $L499 you can't complain at the price!

Thanks for the tip, Bucky. Yes, I know XML.

Well, I think will give PrimDocker a try...after all, I am an artist not a Math Scientist...productivity matters to me alot and I think we should spend more time in art and not math.... hehehe